There is the simplified, clarified outdoor world on a bright November day. The leafless trees are stripped to fundamentals. The horizon is in plain sight and far away. Valleys are broader, their outlines obvious. Hills are somehow higher. It is a bigger world, a world that invites wandering and exploration. – Hal Borland

The Second Week of Late Fall

The Moon, Meteors and Stars

The Robin Migration Moon, full on Nov. 8 at 6:02 a.m., with a total eclipse before it sets, will wane throughout the remainder of the period, reaching apogee, its position farthest from Earth, on Nov. 14 at 2 a.m. Sunset time varies by less than a quarter of an hour between Nov. 14 and Dec. 31.

By the end of the week, Procyon of Canis Major is just over the horizon at midnight. The Great Square has moved into the western half of the sky, Cygnus leading the way. Winter’s Pleiades are well up in the east, followed by Aldebaran and Taurus. Cassiopeia is now due south of Polaris.

The Leonid meteor shower reaches its best on the night of the 16th-17th. Expect no more than 30 shooting stars per hour. They will most likely come out of Leo, deep in the eastern sky.

Weather Trends

Sun often follows the Nov. 11 cold front and may provide some of the best days in the first half of the month for harvest. But if a killing frost has not occurred yet, the morning following this front may be the one to put an end to tender plantings.

As the Nov. 16 front approaches, expect milder conditions, but an increased chance for precipitation. (Precipitation is now as likely to fall in the form of snow as in the form of rain). After the front moves through, favorable harvest conditions typically follow. New moon on the 25th, however, will greatly increase the chances for storms and frost.

Zeitgebers: Events in Nature that Tell the Time of Year

Climbing bittersweet opens in the woods. Hardy forsythia leaves are giving way to the cold and rain. Sugar maples, burned by frost, gradually drop their foliage. Throughout the northern and central parts of the nation, practically all weeds and wildflowers become dormant.

Mid-November usually brings the height of rutting season for white-tailed deer. Their activity level increases during courtship, especially during nighttime hours. This often means an increase in automobile accidents involving deer.

Birds continue to migrate. Watch for the last plovers, willets, yellowlings and sandpipers to be traveling south. Major leaf drop of most hardwood trees has occurred by this time in the year, but foliage of the undergrowth may still complicate looking for game until well into December. Continue to scout groves of oak trees. Acorns increase in importance for whitetail deer as other sources of food disappear. White oak acorns are typically consumed first, then the deer move on to the red oak acorns – some of their favorite autumn treats.

In the Field and Garden

Clean up all around the yard and garden, cut your wood, clear out the hedgerows and haul manure. Plant next year’s sweet peas for early April sprouting. Mulch perennials. Finish repairs to outbuildings.

Soil temperatures fall into the lower 50s, the point at which mulch can be placed around plants and bushes. In the garden, mulch strawberries with straw. Purchase and prepare seeds and flats for the first bedding plant seeding. Cover round bales of hay with heavy tarps before the late fall rains and snows.

When all your leaves are down, then fertilize the garden and pasture. After that, remove tops from your everbearing raspberries. Also think about planting an evergreen in the yard; now that the leaves have fallen, you will be able to position it for best winter appearance.

Continue to market Indian corn, pumpkins and gourds at farmers markets and roadside stands. Show off hand-made Christmas cards in your displays; they are often more appealing than standard store-bought cards. Include one free to your customers.

Mind and Body

Leaf fall continues to impact your mood throughout the period, and the radical changes in the landscape may be significant in how you feel, especially as the holiday season approaches. Light therapy and art therapy are often useful antidotes for November blahs. Explore how they might benefit you. The S.A.D. Index is well up into the 70s throughout the period, reflecting the advance of Late Fall.

No butterflies

It was the leanest butterfly summer for my yard in over 40 years. As in the past, cabbage white butterflies were relatively common from spring to fall. Small blues and golden fold-wing skippers were often present. For a while in August, a few monarchs, male tiger swallowtails (the yellow and black ones) and two zebra swallowtails visited the yard. Other types, however, were almost completely absent for the first time since the 1980s: red admirals, pearl crescents, painted ladies, fritillaries, silver-spotted skippers, hackberries, question marks, mourning cloaks.

People with a greater variety of flowers most likely had a greater number and variety of butterflies. And people who spent more time outside watching for butterflies in more locations probably saw many more than I did. My experience, though, does reflect what I have heard from some others, and it parallels the findings of the North American Butterfly Association. The July 4 butterfly counts that were carried out by members of that association show a 36 percent drop in the total numbers observed over a 10-year period, and the number of butterfly species also fell, especially since 2017. The Ohio Lepidopterists have had similar results in their counts.

Probable causes for the declines are the usual suspects: insecticides, climate change, loss of habitat. Local, personal solutions may be temporarily possible in yards and fields by thoughtful plantings and by stopping the use of pesticides. It seems possible, though, that this decade could see the end of butterflies as a familiar part of our summer world.

Almanack Literature

Trimming Trees

(Don’t do this at home.)

By David Raber, Ashland, Ohio

One day when I came home from school, Dad said we were going to the woods to trim a tree. We took the wagon and two work horses and a ladder.

It was cold that night so me and one of the neighbor boys started cutting down little trees while Dad worked on the big one. We had one down when Dad got done with one big branch, but that branch came down and broke the ladder and a piece of the wagon.

Dad couldn’t get down from the tree so we fixed the ladder. But we then went to cut another little tree, and when it was cut and going down the neighbor boy didn’t get out of the way, and it fell on his head. It didn’t hurt him. Much.

ANSWERS TO LAST WEEK’S SCKRAMBLER

NWONK KNOWN

OEZN ZONE

AOELN ALONE

ENOBMORT TROMBONE

UONWNKN UNKNOWN

EONRP PRONE

OESTN STONE

NOWGR GROWN

EEEONHPLT TELEPHONE

IODSWN DISOWN

THIS WEEK’S RHYMING SCKRAMBLER

In order to estimate your SCKRAMBLER IQ, award yourself 15 points for each word unscrambled, adding a 50-point bonus for getting all of them correct. If you find a typo, add another 15 points to your IQ. Yes, you are a genius.

EREB

AREY

REIT

EEAHDR

RIMA

ETRA

EREV

REILAVAC

EARPAPDIS

ERETNULOV

Copyright 2022 – W. L. Felker